From left are Jim and Anne Buttolph, and scholar of the month Andrew, a junior at Plymouth Regional High School, and his brother, Stephen, a freshman, during the Francis Parker Wayland scholarship dinner. (Thomas Roy/Union Leader)

Plymouth senior is Wayland Parker Scholar of the Year

By TIM BUCKLANDNew Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER — If there’s such a thing as a royal family for the Francis Wayland Parker scholar program, the Buttolph brothers would be its princes.

Andrew Buttolph, named the 2014 Scholar of the Year at a ceremony Wednesday night at the Puritan Backroom, is the second of three brothers to win the honor — his older brother, Michael, won the distinction in 2011. Buttolph’s win, like his brother’s before him, came after he’d been selected as a Scholar of the Month three times.

.“This program has been inspirational to me the past four years,” said Buttolph, who is at the top of his senior class at Plymouth Regional High School.

And he may not be the last. Buttolph’s younger brother, Stephen, a freshman, was a candidate for the top honor this year after being selected the March Scholar of the Month. The other candidates were Samuel Vaal of Manchester High School West, Karina Ithier of Manchester High School West, Aidan Molnar of Hopkinton High School, Seunghyun “Angela” Yeo of Moultonborough Academy, Kayla Vieten of Gilford High School and Lilly Friedman of Plymouth Regional High School...“I’m honored to even be standing in the same room with you,” Andrew Buttolph said in remarks after his selection. “You’re the future and the future is bright.”

Buttolph, who is applying for admission to Cornell University, is involved in so many school and extracurricular activities that he needed three sheets of paper to list them all. He plays the trumpet, is on the ski-jumping team and trivia club and is a member of the student senate. He’s a member of the National Honor Society, has received the national Presidential volunteer service award three times and is an Eagle Scout...Virginia Barry, the state education commissioner, told the students she hopes they find their way back to the state after attending college.

“There is nothing better in education than to celebrate student success,” she said. “You are people who have amazing futures ahead of you. You are all the kind of people who we want to come back to New Hampshire after your journeys.”..The Francis Wayland Parker Scholar program is sponsored by the New Hampshire Association of School Principals, in cooperation with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Lifetouch Studios and the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Northern New England...tbuckland@unionleader.com..